


Tornado Meets a Volcano

by LovelyPlantPrincess



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Domestic Violence, Explicit Language, F/M, Failed Attempted Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 17:57:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6480769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPlantPrincess/pseuds/LovelyPlantPrincess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clay was the tornado to Gemma’s volcano, and it was a deadly mixture that had to be handled carefully. Jax and Tara were the hurricanes that took it too far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tornado Meets a Volcano

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this ship video | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0MDLneknlM | If you are a Gemma/Clay shipper, but you haven’t seen it yet, please go watch it! It’s a lovely piece that visually depicts this story and Gemma & Clay’s relationship perfectly.

**Tornado Meets A Volcano**

For almost twenty years, Gemma and Clay had been unbelievably happy together. Of course, like every other couple, they naturally had their downs to match their ups - although, compared to every other couple, their downs tended to be nastier, bloodier, and _definitely_ sadder - and their disagreements. But for the most part, Gemma could honestly say that the past seventeen years she spent as Clay’s wife had been some of the happiest of her entire lifetime - just _barely_ ranked under the birth of her two sons.

Things were okay. Things were more than okay - they were fan- _fucking_ -tastic, and neither of them had anything to complain about.

Even after Tara’s return - which, _admittedly_ , Gemma obsessed over - Abel’s birth, and her rape, she and Clay still managed to stay above water. And when Tara began to accept the life that her son was leading, things became even better.

Their biggest problems could be handled with a single phone call.

 _(Gemma loves Tara. She truly does. The girl is goddamned firecracker, and used to be a pain in her ass, but for the most part - she’s got her head on straight. Gemma doesn’t mind her marrying her son, or mothering her grandchildren. Gemma_ **_knows_ ** _she’ll be a good woman.)_

Clay and the Club were practically rolling in money, and although he was _still_ butting heads with his step-son… even _he_ thought things would be fairytale like this forever - and he lived the type of life that trained him to never enjoy what he had too much, because it could be taken away at the snap of someone’s fingers. But he managed to push aside the nervousness and enjoy things - _especially_ considering that now that Gemma had went through menopause, they were able to do kinkier things that he could _never_ complain about.

 _No one_ \- not even _Clay_ , who was _always_ prepared for the worst - suspected that life would swoop in and take away Abel. _Especially_ not Jax.

Despite his sons break down, and his Club falling apart at the seams due to the absence of their treasured nephew, grandson, godson, _however_ they saw Abel - Clay took control and handled it _well_. He didn’t break down and he didn’t let the baby’s suddenly _stark_ absence cloud his thoughts.

Abel was his grandson, and he loved him deeply, but he still didn’t have that blood connection that muddied his mind - not like Jax, and eventually, Gemma had. And although almost no one in the Club was blood related to the baby, Tara seemed to be the _only_ other person to understand this as well. She loved Abel too, but she simply didn’t have it in her to feel that emptiness from the loss because he _wasn’t her child_. Not officially, anyways.

They bonded over that, in a sense. He understood Tara’s conflict - she felt guilty because she _didn’t_ feel guilty about Abel’s kidnapping. She felt as though that would make her a bad mother to the child she carried in her womb - and Clay fathered her the way her _real father_ never did. He never expected Tara to betray them - they’d become too close over this.

 _(And Clay should’ve seen it coming, too. He_ **_knew_ ** _he could only trust two people - Tiggy and Gemma. In the blur of trying to keep family close and expel enemies, he forgot to keep everyone else at arm’s distance - including Jax and Tara. That was his mistake, and he’d own up to it.)_

When the guys get out of jail with less of a headache than they went in with - _Tara was now officially implanted in the Club, having give birth to a member's son. Gemma was off house arrest, so she could go anywhere and do anything with her husband_ **_freely_** _. And Stahl would never be a wart on their ass ever again._ \- things start to look to the brightside again. Gemma is happy keeping Tara under her wing and training her to be the perfect old lady - and eventual, Matron of Anarchy - and Clay has fed his troubles with Jackson to the troll that lived under their sturdy bridge.

Things are more than okay again. They’re _great_.

Or at least, they are until Gemma finds the note from Maureen hidden in Abel’s coloring book. She tries to keep calm, but she can’t help it - she panics. She can’t let her son find out about the dirt they’d buried long ago - especially if it’s learning it from the sleazy slut from across the ocean. Jackson finding out the truth about who his father was would ruin everything she’s been working three years to build and she _couldn’t_ let that happen. Things were finally good again. _Everything_ was _finally_ alright again.

She tells Clay - _and that’s a mistake on her part_ \- about what she found, and he assures her that things are gonna be alright. There was no guaranteeing anything was wrong. She doesn’t believe him - _and that’s the second mistake._

The next few weeks is a constant battle between Gemma, Clay, Tara and even - at some point - _Piney_. It’s an all-out _war_ for the letters - Gemma and Clay want the secrets to be and _stay_ buried, Tara just wants to find out if there’s any truth behind them, and Piney wants to destroy _everything_ Clay had built.

Clay decides that the only way to win the war was to **take out the enemy**. Gemma doesn’t agree with him, and perhaps, _that’s her third mistake_.

**_Three strikes, and she’s out._ **

He attacks Piney - blows him cold in the middle of the cabin, leaves him there to rot. And then he attacks Tara - sets it up so that she may _never_ see the light of day again.

Once they step back and assess the situation, Tara was _never_ the enemy in the first place. She just wanted to know some juicy gossip - in a way - she never wanted to destroy the bond Jax held with his mother and step-father. Of course, she _did_ want to get away from the Club - but she knew better. She knew that it would **never** happen, and that if it did, it’d be because she took everything and left - not because Jax voluntarily left with her.

Gemma just mistakes her for the enemy. And in the process, her husband as well. Their fighting escalates into dangerous territory - they say things to each other that they would have never said before, do things that they would’ve never even _dared_ to do. Their silly arguments become knock-down, drag-out fights. Their petty squabbles become days spent apart, or not talking to each other.

 _(Clay_ **_hits_ ** _her, but her son does much worse.)_

To be fair, Gemma held her own against her husband. But she was just 5’7 and a buck fifty soaking wet. He was 6’2 and almost two hundred pounds - it was hardly an effort on his part to overpower her.

Clay beats her until her face is unrecognizable and her screaming turns into muffled, pained moans. Afterwards, he simply leaves her there to bleed out. He regrets it as soon as he’s on his bike, and considers running back in there and calling an ambulance - either that, or finishing her off so that there’s no one she could tell. He decides against it - knows that Gemma would rather die on her kitchen floor than let a single soul _outside the family_ know she had a weak moment, and also knows there’s no way he’d have the balls to actually kill the love of his life.

 _(She cups his face and tells him she’s sorry, and that she_ **_loves_ ** _him. She knows she has no right to be apologizing, but she’s doing it anyways because she doesn’t want him to remember her as a cold-hearted bitch that did nothing but ruin his life. She doesn’t think she could live with herself - although in the end, that won’t matter much.)_

Two days following him hitting her, he manages to catch her at T-M. Gemma had been doing a superb job of avoiding him - changing the locks on the house so that she didn’t have to face him, avoiding the Clubhouse at all cost, working in the office for only a couple of hours at a time - but he just so happens to be taking his bike in for a check-up when he sees her at the desk.

Clay makes sure there are witnesses - makes sure that the door to the garage is hanging wide open, and that the guys working can see her at all times - because he doesn’t want her to think he’s come back to finish some sort of job. Especially since there’s a flicker of fear in her eyes when he fills up the office doorway, and it pains him to see her so afraid of him. He _loves_ her - she’s the _only thing_ left in this world that he _doesn’t_ hate. He would go to the ends of the earth for her, although he knows there’s no taking him back after what happened.

They talk. She remains at the office desk with the chair pushed against the wall, he in the chair by the door - his hands clasped visibly in his lap. But they talk, and it’s more than he could’ve asked for.

(" _Don’t leave me baby. Please don’t_ **_leave me_ ** _. I love you, and I’m extremely sorry about what I did - I hate myself for than you think - but I really don’t think I can live without you.”)_

What neither of them know is that Tara gave the letters to Piney sometime after her almost-kidnapping, who then showed them to Opie, who then told Jax everything. Gemma and Clay are too caught up in the moment - he _actually_ gets her to crack a small smile, and it’s delightful to see because he hasn’t seen her so much as smirk in literal _months_ \- to see Jax furiously climbing off of his bike.

When Gemma does finally look up and spot her son, her eyes catch the gun gripped tightly in his right hand. Although fear sparks deep in her stomach, she stands and moves towards the door to block him from seeing her husband. Clay - surprised that she is standing so closed to him, so suddenly - stands with her. He doesn’t see the gun, but he sees the anger in the kids eyes - he figures it’s because Jax didn’t want Clay around his mother after what happened.

Clay steps in front of Gemma with his hands raised in surrender, opening his mouth to explain that she is completely safe from harm.

Jax **raises** the gun.

Clay **freezes** in his tracks.

Gemma takes **action**.

(" _I didn’t mean it,” Jax shouts, realizing the horror of_ **_what he’s done_** _. “I missed! I missed, it was supposed to- I didn’t-”)_

She collapses in front of her husband, the bullet lodged dangerously deep into her stomach - so much so, that there isn’t an exit wound. Deep red blooms on the white cloth of her shirt, spreading until her entire shirt is dripping with her own blood. Jax drops the gun immediately after firing, the anger on his face morphing into guilt, shame and fear.

Clay catches her just before her head hits the ground, cradling her in his lap. His hands press down hard on the wound, and she knows he’s talking but his voice is muffled. Gemma’s eyes float lazily around - looking at anything beside her son, and the gun that he had just been gripping - and eventually land on a shell-shocked Tara.

Her daughter-in-law is standing by the bikes, the same guilt that Jax wore mimicked on her own face. Unable to think of anything else, Gemma tries to come up with a solution as to how all of this could’ve happened - especially with Tara’s reassurance that she would have never told Jax.

She comes to this conclusion: Instead of getting rid of the letters, Tara gave them to Piney - _knowing_ that the chain of events that happened in the end could be fatal for anyone. Including her bitch of a mother-in-law.

There are sirens in the distance as Gemma comes to yet another chilling realization.

 _Jax may have held the smoking gun, but the woman she called her_ **_daughter_ ** _was the one that murdered her._

_(“_ _I had to do it,"_ _Tara mouths, as Gemma slowly starts to slip into the darkness. “I’m sorry, **mom**.”)_

Gemma loves Tara. She truly does. The girl is goddamned firecracker, and used to be a pain in her ass, but for the most part - she’s got her head on straight. Gemma doesn’t mind her marrying her son, or mothering her grandchildren. Gemma **knows** she’ll raise her grandkids right.

After all, she was good enough to get away with conspiracy.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like, at the end of the story, you can go back and read the tidbits in parentheses. They tell a summary of the story, or a small continuation of it.


End file.
